Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Ich bin eine Strudel Frau!*

I love apple strudel. In my opinion, the gold standard is the strudel at the Black Forest Inn in South Minneapolis. A German restaurant and bakery, BFI serves the flakiest and tastiest apple strudel (with lots of whipped cream). I worked at the Black Forest years ago and served many, many slices. I ate my fair share too. I didn't know that strudel like that could be made at home. But it can! Look at that flaky pastry and tasting filling. I can hardly believe I made that. Surprisingly, it's not difficult and doesn't take all day.

This month we Daring Bakers were given the opportunity to make authentic strudel. The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

The strudel dough is mixed together, rested and then stretched, rather than rolled. The first time I made the dough I was able to stretch the small ball of dough into a rectangle that was 2 feet by 3 feet, as called for in the recipe. It is so thin you can see through it. It's quite amazing how stretchy it is. The challenge recipe includes a traditional apple filling flavored with rum, raisins and walnuts. Everyone at my house loved this strudel. It was even requested as a birthday dessert, so I made it again. I went on to make more strudels: a mango filling with coconut, almonds and pineapple. And one with cherry and honey-sweetened ricotta cheese.

I also made one savory strudel and filled it with chicken, spinach, mushrooms and fontina. It was very tasty and I'm sorry that I don't have pictures. By making a half recipe of the strudel dough, it was easy to make a dinner strudel that served four to six and didn't take up the entire kitchen when stretching the dough.

I do recommend doing an internet search for strudel dough pictures and videos. There is really no comparison between seeing how it's done and reading about it. The challenge recipe can be found here.

Thanks to our challenge hosts for this recipe. I loved learning how to make this dough and know that I will be making again often.

9 comments:

Strudel Goddess that's right - wonderful strudels you did and so many. I really like the cherry one looks so yummy. And a special thank you from me to you for all your great advice on this challenge it really helped me a lot. Bravo bravo bravo on this challenge. Good to hear that it was as good as the store made strudel you used to make. Cheers from Audax